This invention relates to hand held vacuum cleaners in general and more particularly relates to a vacuum cleaner of this type that may readily be converted to a blower.
The R. C. Berfield copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 658,353 filed Oct. 5, 1984 now U.S. Pat. No. 4,586,214, issued May 6, 1986, discloses a relatively lightweight compact vacuum cleaner that may be conveniently carried while in use. In that type of cleaner, as in many other hand held vacuum cleaners of the prior art, the pickup nozzle or other cleaning tool is connected to the canister by a flexible hose. There are other hand held vacuum cleaner constructions in which the nozzle is connected to the canister by means of a rigid tube. Another prior art construction is described in the J. O. Miller, K. E. Strouse and R. M. Fegan U.S. Pat. No. 4,380,845 issued Apr. 26, 1983 for a Nozzle For a Hand-Held Vacuum. These last two constructions are such that the cleaners are often inconvenient to use because in each case the handle on the canister is so far from the nozzle.